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The Giant Awakens
Topic Started: May 30 2012, 09:14 AM (309 Views)
East Anarx
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Anarchitect

Johann Viegrief the fisherman strikes a match. The tiny flame flickers in the gentle sea breeze as the wrinkled sailor brings it close to his pipe and inhales deeply. As the smoke fills his lungs, Johann's eyes scan the night sky and quickly find the north star. Far below Polaris, by the faint starlight, he can just make out the silhouette of the skyline of Noskaftafellthing. The city lights are reflected by the great glacier, Vatnajokull. Rising above both the skyscrapers and the glacier is the volcano, Oraefajokull. The fisherman exhales, and the cloud of smoke is swiftly carried away and dispersed by the breeze.

Without warning, a terrible rumbling sound begins to emanate from the giant volcano. The earth quakes, making waves that lift Johann in his small boat and drop him down again. On the crest of a wave, he sees a reddish light in the darkness, illuminating plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

After centuries of slumber, the giant awakens.
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East Anarx
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Anarchitect

Jingle Jangle was rather tall in comparison with other members of his race, standing a good 4 feet 2 inches on his tippy-toes. This gave him a slight advantage when it came to harvesting, and so he was usually able to slough off the less desirable jobs, like applying the fish-based fertilizer, onto his co-workers. His employer, Weeda Claus, was off on some kind of vacation somewhere warm and southern, as usual. This, combined with the otherwise non-hierarchical organizational structure of Weeda Claus Farms left him, (at least in his own mind,) in charge.

Jingle hopped daftly up onto a crate filled with sticky green herb and put his hands on his hips. He was quite aware of how dashing he looked in his starched green tunic with his silver belt glittering in the light from the grow-lamps, and so he simply basked in the pose for a moment.

Then, noticing one of the newbies struggling to maneuver a wheelbarrow piled just a little too high with fish fertilizer, he called out, "Yo!"

The other took his attention off of steering for just a split second to see who was yelling at him, and that was all it took to dump the whole load of odorous fish into the middle of a group of old-timers on their lunch break.

Jingle Jangle took advantage of the ensuing discord to hop down from the crate and disappear into the endless fields of dope. He stopped to rest in the shade of an enormous cannabis plant and picked some gunk out of his ear. Then, quite suddenly, the ground began shaking violently, a terrible rumble from below seemed to grow into a roar, and all the lights went out.

Jingle stumbled through the marijuana forest, dodging several falling plants and barely avoiding being crushed. How long he ran through the shaking darkness he didn't know, but it felt like an eternity. Finally, he made it to the door and burst out into... blinding whiteness!? Snow? No, it wasn't snow, even though it could have easily been snowing this time of year. Ash. Thick billowing clouds of ash and smoke filled the air.

"Oraefajokull," the elf said, with a tone of reverence.
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East Anarx
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Anarchitect

5 Hours Prior

In the village of Ulfur, Noskaftafellthing, in the shadow of Oraefajokull, a ritual is taking place. The last rays of light from the setting sun fall onto a stone altar in the middle of a pentagram. The five figures standing at the points of the pentagram are intensely focused. The grotesque masks and black hoods they wear hide their grimaces. They hold their focus, even as a young girl is dragged through their midst and chained to the altar. The air is perceptibly charged with a kind of energy, as if before a thunderstorm, though the sky is clear. The girl's screams of horror and protest fall on deaf ears.

The chanting begins softly, in a language that sounds as though it was not meant to be spoken by human tongues. At first, the girl keeps on screaming, but as the chant grows in intensity, she finds herself frozen in fear. Her mouth opens in a kind of silent scream, her eyes wide with terror. The chanting is quite loud now, and the strange words seem to blend together, forming a twisted melody. The stone altar to which she is chained seems to be growing warmer. As her torn clothes begin to smoke and her flesh sizzles, her voice returns and her screams pierce the air. She goes on screaming until the fire has consumed her. The stone and the chains are red-hot now, and a pile of ash is all that remains of the sacrifice.

The mountain is pleased.
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The Authority of the Grand Moff
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2nd Lieutenant
 *  *  *  *  *
OOC: Um... elves? Pot-smoking elves? Is this an actual RP, or are you flexing your creative writing juices? :huh:
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East Anarx
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Anarchitect

OOC: Yes.

Posted Image
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New Harumf
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Bloodthirsty Unicorn
I am loving it!!
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East Anarx
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Anarchitect

Lord Pine Glow's castle was carved into the side of a cliff. Above and around this monolithic stone structure, a slow-motion avalanche of glacial ice seemed to be pouring forth from the sky. Unlike the village of Ulfur, which remained in the shadow of Oraefajokull only during the afternoon and evening, Pine Glow was shaded by the mountain nearly all day from dawn to dusk. Deep inside his castle, Lord Pine Glow sat on a throne of volcanic stone, formed from overflowing magma during the last eruption. How long ago had it been? Centuries, at least, though to the ancient Lord it had seemed like only a few short months.

Now Lord Pine Glow moved at breakneck speed, though to an observer, (if any had dared to weave their way through the jagged maze of stone and ice that protected his inner sanctum,) he would seem to barely stir. He could feel it, the ritual had been performed. Any moment now, the mountain would open its fiery jaws and swallow the city whole, unless...

Several kilometers to the south and east, behind high fences designating the area as a wilderness protectorate, there was a certain peculiar valley with a certain peculiar lake in the middle of it. There was some speculation that this valley was actually a crater formed from an asteroid impact, perhaps even the impact that killed off the dinosaurs, but little evidence had ever been successfully gathered, as so few of the scientists that entered the valley made it back out alive. Those who did were deemed insane and admitted. Their ravings about prehistoric monsters were summarily dismissed and never made it into any scientific journal of any significance.

Lord Pine Glow never read scientific journals. To him, the existence of the Skafta Fell Thing, or Skaffy as he affectionately referred to the beast, was not myth, but cold hard fact. If there was any way to stop the mountain, it was the Skafta Fell Thing.
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East Anarx
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Anarchitect

On the outskirts of the Loch Skafta Wilderness Protectorate, Hugo Vernor puffed on an imported tobacco cigarette. This nasty habit was frowned upon by his family and friends, who were always trying to get him to switch to the much safer and less expensive cannabis, but he preferred the taste of the cancerous brown leaf, and it was his body after all. Hugo was one of the few "government employees" of Noskaftafellthing. The pay was lousy, the hours were long, but he got to sit in a watchtower overlooking scenic Loch Skafta and smoke tobacco to his heart's content for 5 days a week.

Usually, nothing happened, but occasionally someone would try to hop the fence and investigate the legendary lake themselves. When this happened, Hugo would get to play with the security system. It was not strictly illegal to enter the protectorate, as long as one did not go about polluting and destroying the environment, but it was highly discouraged, and unexplained disappearances seemed to increase in frequency the nearer one got to the center of the lake. The security system consisted of a number of non-lethal remote-activated traps around the perimeter of the park. Some of them would drop great blobs of sticky slime from the treetops, some would release clouds of mildly hallucinogenic vapor from brightly colored flowers, and some would simply play eerie music in frequencies outside of the hearing range of human ears, instilling a nameless discomfort in the listener. This combination of traps was usually enough to dissuade the average explorer from venturing deeper into the park, and was capable of slowing down all but the most intrepid and cunning adventurer. Those who did not heed these warnings were, at least as far as Hugo was concerned, entirely deserving of their fate.

Today, there were no explorers, and so Hugo simply sat and smoked his tobacco, wondering where exactly his paychecks actually came from, considering taxation was unheard of in Noskaftafellthing. He glimpsed some kind of movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to peer out over the green expanse of woods towards the lake, where he saw what looked like a grayish tail vanishing under the surface with a splash.
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